


It’s Not Hard to See the Heart in It

by fluffernutter8



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, POV Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-23
Updated: 2014-07-23
Packaged: 2018-02-10 01:07:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2005152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffernutter8/pseuds/fluffernutter8
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neptune is not as picture-perfect as promised. Wallace POV following season 1.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It’s Not Hard to See the Heart in It

Wallace’s mom had advertised their move to Neptune under a banner of fresh starts and a higher salary, clean streets and California coastline weather. Wallace had known, even still sitting on their beat up couch in Cleveland, that he would need to get a job within the first week. But no one had told him that beaches were windy and that sand was hard to walk on, that the clean streets were reserved for a certain part of town, that the bullies there had apparently never heard his dad’s talk about taking your medicine and getting over it. No one told him to expect that he, always a comfortable one of the guys, would become best friends with a prickly-sweet girl who could thrust out a pocket knife in the face of a crowd but who couldn’t bring herself to give him more than the shiest of hand waves.

He was never going to get Veronica Mars, and he’d accepted that. He loved her anyway. He might not understand why there wasn’t just a little get along spirit in her, but he appreciated it all the more when she tried for his sake. He was hoping to live a long, healthy life, but in the case of his hypothetical murder, he would definitely want her solving it.

Sometimes he knew that there were just pieces that she was keeping hidden from him, things that would help him to figure her out but that she crouched over, protective, pained. One of them had apparently been that sometime after Wallace’s first lesson in how not to get your car detailed, Logan Echolls had become a persona  _very_  grata in the life of Veronica Mars. He could barely keep up with it all, and he would never understand it, but none of that mattered now.

His mother had come home to get a few hours of sleep, had relieved his watch over Darrell in order to make sure that the entire Mars family was doing alright. He beat the TV crews to the apartment in the hours that could only very charitably be considered morning. He used the spare key to let himself in, ready to quiet Backup and maybe start on breakfast for when Veronica woke up from what he assumed was her worst night ever. But Veronica was already up, sitting knees to chest on the couch, staring straight ahead. She looked toward him as he closed the door.

“Wallace,” she said. Her face tried to smile but something went wrong and tears cracked through instead. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

He tossed the key on the counter and went to sit next to her. “Hey, girl, you know that all you gotta do is call, right?” It wasn’t like the other day on his bed, with her tensely separate body refusing to get too close to his. Now she tilted into him, heavy, solid, and he slid a careful arm around her.

“Winter, spring, summer or fall?”

“Basically the same thing here,” he joked, voice soft. “Wanna tell me what happened?”

It came out garbled in her rushing words, but from what he gathered, he really hoped this was the worst night of her life because he couldn’t imagine a confluence of more painful events. “And I got home and I-” Her voice didn’t trail off, it took a dive off a cliff. He waited through her deep breaths until she continued. “I told my mom she had to leave in the morning, but I guess she was afraid of outstaying her welcome because she’s already gone. And then Logan…” The whole time she talked about Logan showing up at her door, about caring for him, about him being taken away by the deputies, her fingers moved unconsciously over body, to her ribs and face, places where he could see no bruises on her. And as much as he didn’t understand the how or the why, as much as he would probably never understand even if she put the puzzle together in front of his face, he saw it. He didn’t know what she saw in Logan, or even if she knew what she saw in Logan, but it was there.

He brought her a blanket, forced her to take a nap on the couch, promised to wake her up in a few hours once it was possible for her to go check on Logan. He sat in the armchair, giving himself a few minutes before Backup would need to be walked and fed, before Veronica would need her own food.

He understood Veronica Mars better than most. He was never going to fully understand her. He worked a minimum wage job in a town whose sunny streets were at war. His fresh start was at least a partial disaster.

He didn’t regret anything.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Written for favorite season day of tumblr's Logan and Veronica Appreciation Week.


End file.
